waiting to open I am still / a bud waiting to open

How may dormancy — learnt from seeds and chronically ill or queercrip bodyminds — subvert inflammation? How does a plant, a gardener, an artist, or a microbiologist lie dormant?

While gardeners are waking up sage and dill, join the third session of an online study group to listen to Dr Emily May Armstrong talk about dormancy as a complex kind of individual and communal activity. Both seeds and human bodyminds need tending, especially those that urgently require slower paces due to chronic exhaustion, ill health and neurodivergence. What daily practices of tending to these dormancies are we already a part of?

Then, discuss excerpts from Mulch and Blanket, two zines germinated by the remote body community, and be guided by writer and researcher Char Heather in writing exercises—reimagine dormancy as a daily lived political practice of refusing social inflammation.

This study group is for anyone interested in anti-ableist collective practices of nurture and what plants can teach us about survival and queercrip joy. No prior knowledge is required; you might want to browse through the zines before joining.

The title of the session is credited to Romany Stott, garden bed, Mulch, 2024.

About the contributors

Anastasia (A) Alevtin (they/them) dwells as a theorist, writer and artist whose work centres on the ways in which queercrip, migratised and other precarious individuals and communities quietly subvert structural marginalisation. Herbs, berries and corpo-affectivity of chronic illness are currently on (A)’s mind.

Char Heather is a writer and researcher with a focus on crip narratives, and founder of 'the remote body', a platform for online workshops that prioritise chronically ill and disabled people.

Dr Emily May Armstrong (they/them) reads, writes, and researches across plants, bodies, queerness, and health. They are supported and informed by non-human teachers.

About the project

waiting to open I am still / a bud waiting to open is a second gathering of a Spring study group, organised as part of Dormancy, Reseeding, Resistance. Initiated by Anastasia (A) Alevtin, this project is centred on anti-ableist and queercrip dailiness, communal gardening and seed-saving practices.

It connects the northern latitudes of Finland and Scotland and disperses beyond them to discuss structural economic precarity, food insecurity and, in the words of Dr Emily May Armstrong, phytocrip resistance to a worldly condition of inflammation.

Dormancy, Reseeding, Resistance culminates with a collectively written manifesto that mulches all the thoughts and affects accumulated in the group. This will be celebrated with communal meals in Glasgow and Vantaa’s Light-harvesting Complex. The manifesto is published by Ei Mainoksia, Kiitos!

Dormancy, Reseeding, Resistance is supported by Glasgow Seed Library, Light-harvesting Complex, The Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland and The Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Access

This event will take place online using Zoom. The interface will include automatic captioning. Please email glasgowseedlibrary@cca-glasgow.com with any questions or access requests.